Grandkids Are Like Vitamins

 We've got two grandkids (and their parents) visiting since yesterday.  My phone weather app predicted that our glorious weather would end Sunday.  But it didn't.  Nor Monday.  Nor today.  Sunny,  short sleeve and pants weather.  Tested the borrowed bikes last night to go to the playground.  His is fine.  Hers has foot brakes and she tends to use her shoes instead of the brakes.  But otherwise she's a great rider.  Then an epic battle.  Though I did point out that we used to play just as well with paper and pencil. 

Today after a tour of the backyard, some time in sprinkler, we went to Kincaid.  They biked down the hill and we walked along and then down onto the beach,  The tide was very low.

We walked through the sandy part, to the rocky part, to the muddy part.  

Two sleeping vitamins on the way home.  Wonderful day.  Lots of fun.  

It's good to take a break from the world now and then.  Especially now.  

There are construction projects in the living room.

And I was told to find something on my computer.  I opened the paper and found this:

Apeirogon Part 2: Fighting For Peace In A World Of Fear

Yesterday I gave you flowers, now back to graver stuff. But I think you'll find this inspiring.  

I've posted about Colum McCann's Apeirogon before.  It was not even an appetizer.  Less even than the menu.  And this might be a very light appetizer of a very heavy book.  

I'm going to take you to the crucible.  One of the two key sections that the book is leading up to and then retreating from.  This is section 500 - in the middle of the book. (I'm saying section because chapter isn't right.  Each section could be anything from a line to half a dozen pages.)  After section 500 comes section 1001. Then another section 500 and back down eventually to a second section 1.  

Rami and Bassam have both lost daughters - Rami to a suicide bomber in Jeruselum and Bassam to an Israeli police rubber bullet.  They've lived parallel but totally separate lives.  The narrator gives us glimpses at events, and then we see the events again, but from a slightly different perspective. There are a lot of birds who remind us they've been around much longer than the humans and that we are part of a much larger natural world.  

By section 500 we know Rami and Bassam quite well.  And we've walked through the scenes that led to their daughters' deaths and what happened in the following years repeatedly.  In their respective sections 500, Rami and Bassam put their whole stories together in one long narration each.  It takes place in Beit Jala in the West Bank.  When I went back to reread section 1, it was Rami riding his motorcycle up to the monastery, though I had no idea of how that would fit into the story then    

I'm going to give excerpts from Rami's speech to the people assembled in the monastery because I think it is extraordinary and very relevant to humans around the world and in the US.  

I think these passages are compelling, but readers might not be so inspired they way I've offered them.  But please read the bolded parts at least.

It begins:

"My name is Rami Elhanan.  I am the father of Smadar.  I am a sixty-seven-year-old graphic designer, an Israeli, a Jew, a seventh-generation Jerusalemite.  Also what you might call a graduate of the Holocaust.  My mother was born in the Old City of Jerusalem, to an ultra-Orthodox family.  My father came here in 1946.  What he saw in the camps he seldom spoke about, except to my daughter Smadar when she was ten or eleven.  I was a kid from a straightforward background - we weren't wealthy but we weren't poor.  I got in some trouble at school, nothing big, I ended up in industrial school, then studied art, more or less an ordinary life."

He talks about his time in the Army as a young man during the Yom Kippur war.  He went to art school afterward and met his future wife and had four kids.  

"I was doing graphic design - posters and ads - for the right-wing, for the left wing, whoever paid money.  Life was good.  We were happy, complacent.  To be honest it suited me. . .when this incredible bubble of ours burst in midair into a million pieces. It was the beginning of a long cold dark night the is still long and cold and dark and will always be longh and cold and dark, until the end when it will still be cold and dark.

I have told this story so many times, [as the author has leading us to this point] but there is always something new to be said.  Memories hit you all the time.  A book that is opened.  A door that is closed, a beeping sound, a window opened. Anything at all.  A butterfly. 

Then he describes in detail the day his daughter died.  Hearing about a bombing on the car radio and checking mentally where all his family should be that day.  Then calling to be sure everyone is ok. 

More details of what happened that day. Then the funeral.  The people who come to his house afterward - his wife's father was an important person in Israel and there are thousands at the house and in the streets.

"Look, I have a bad temper. I know it.  I have an ability to blow up.  Long ago, I killed people in the war. Distantly, like in a video game.  I held a gun. I drove tanks. I fought in three wars. I survived. And the truth is, the awful truth, the Arabs were just a thing to me, remote and abstract and meaningless.  I didn't see them as anything real or tangible.  They weren't even visible.  I didn't think about them, they were not really part of my life, good or bad.  The Palestinians in Jerusalem, well, they mowed the lawns, the collected the garbage, they built the houses, cleared the plates from the table.  Like every Israeli, I knew they were there, and I pretended I knew them, even pretended I liked some of them, the safe ones - we talked about them like that, the safe ones, the dangerous ones - and I never would have admitted it, not even to myself, but they might as well have been lawn mowers, dish washing machines, taxis, trucks.  . . And if they were ever anything other than objects, they were objects to be feared, because, if you didn't fear them then they would become real people. And we didn't want them to be real people, we couldn't handle that.  A real Palestinian was a man on the dark side of the moon.  This is my shame.  I understand it as my shame.  I know that now.  I didn't know it then.  I don't excuse myself.  Please understand, I don't excuse myself at all."

He continues about how he attempted to go on with his life - brushing his teeth, making posters at work. But thoughts invade.  Killing others won't bring his daughter back.  

"Then about a year after Smadar was killed, I met a man who changed my life.  His name was Yitzhak Frankenthal, a religious Jew, Orthodox, with a kippah on his head.  And you know, we tend to put people into drawers, stigmatize people?  We tend to judge people by the way they dress, and I was certain that this guy was a right-winger, a fascist, that he eats Arabs for breakfast.  But we started talking and he told me about his son Arik, a soldier who was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 1994.  And then he told me about this organization, the Parents Circle, that he had created - people who lost their loved ones, Palestinian and Israeli, but still wanted peace.  And I remembered that Yitzhak had been among the thousands and thousands of people that came to my house a year before during those seven days of shiva for Smadar, and I was so angry with him, so confused, I asked him, How could you do it?  Serious, how could you step into someone's house who just lost a loved one, and then talk about peace?  How dare you?  You came to my house after Smadar was killed?  You took for granted that I would feel the same way as you, just because I was Matti Peled's son-in-law or Nurit Peled's husband, you thought you could take my grief for granted?  Is that what you thought?"

". . . I got on my bike and I went to see.  I stood outside where people were coming for the meeting, very detached, very cynical.  And I watched those people arriving.  The first group were, for me - as an Israeli - living legends.  People I used to look up to, admire. . .

But then I saw something else, something completely new to me, to my eyes, my mind, my heart, my brain.  I was standing there, and I saw a few Palestinians passing by in a bus.  Listen, this flabbergasted me.  I knew it was going to happen, but still I had to do a double take.  Arabs?  Really?  Going into the same meeting as these Israelis?  How could that be?  A thinking, feeling, breathing Palestinian?  And I remember this lady in this black, traditional Palestinian dress, what a headscarf - you now, the sort of woman who I might have thought could be the mother of one of the bombers who took my child.  She was slow and elegant, stepping down from the bus, walking in my direction.  And then I saw it, she had a picture of her daughter clutched to her chest.  She walked past me.  I couldn't move.  And this was like an earthquake inside me:  this woman had lost her child.  It maybe sounds simple, but is was not.  I had been in a sort of coffin.  This lifted the lid from my eyes.  My grief and her grief, the same grief.

I went inside to meet these people.  And here they were, and they were shaking my hand, hugging me, crying with me.  I was so deeply touched, so deeply moved.  It was like a hammer on my head cracking me open.  An organization of the bereaved.  Israeli and Palestinian, Jew, Christian, Muslim, atheist, you name it.  Together.  In one room.  Sharing their sorrow.  .  . I cannot tell you what sort of madness it seemed.  And I was completely cleaved open.  It was like a nuclear event.  Truly, it seemed mad."

He tells us he was forty-seven or forty-eight at the time . . .

". . . it was the first time that I'd met Palestinians as human beings.  Not just workers in the streets, not just caricatures in the newspaper, not just transparencies, terrorists, objects, but - how do I say this? - human beings - human beings who carry the same burden that I carry, people who suffer exactly as I suffer.  An equality of pain.  And like Bassam says, we are running from our pain to our pain.  I'm not a religious person, far from it - I have no way of explaining what happened to me back then.  If you had told me years ago that I would say this, I would have said you were crazy." 

All that, so far, is so relevant to the US today.  Whether we are talking about blacks and whites, about rich and poor, about gay and straight, about men and women, about religious fundamentalists and atheists, about Republicans and Democrats.  So many are just objects, caricatures.

But it gets even more significant as we watch people like DeSantis try to ban people from knowing things he doesn't want them to know.  Organizations like Fox reporting fictional worlds as if they were real.  

"Some people have an interest in keeping the silence.  Others have an interest in sowing hatred based on fear.  Fear makes money, and it makes laws, and it takes land, and it builds settlements, and fear likes to keep everyone silent.  And, let's face it, in Israel we're very good at fear, it occupies us.  Our politicians like to scare us.  We like to scare each other.  We use the word security to silence others.  But it's not about that, it's about occupying someone else's life, someone else's land, someone else's head.  It's about control.  Which is power.  And I realized this with the force of an ax, that it's true, this notion of speaking truth against power.  Power already knows the truth.  It tries to hide it.  So you have to speak out against power.  And I began, back then, to understand the duty we have to try to understand what's going on.  Once you know what's going on then you begin to think:  What can we do about it?  We could not continue to disavow the possibility of living alongside each other.  I'm not asking for everyone to get along, or anything corny or airy-fairy, but I am asking for them to be allowed to get along.  And, as I began to think about this, I began to think that I had stumbled upon the most important question of them all:  What can you do, personally, in order to try to help prevent this unbearable pain for others?  All I can tell you is that from that moment until today, I've devoted my time, my life to going everywhere possible, to talk to anyone possible, people who want to listen - even to people who will not listen - to convey this very basic and every simple message, which says:  We are not doomed, but we have to try to smash the forces that have an interest in keeping us silent."

The pages on this blog rarely have such long quoted passages.  But there is nothing I can say that could possibly have more impact than the words the author puts on Rami's tongue.  (The book is described as fiction based on the lives of these two men.   The author, an Irish man who has experienced his own split world, tells us, that two two speeches at the center of the book - the one I'm quoting - and Hassam's - "are pulled together from a series of interviews in Jerusalem, New York, Jericho and Beit Jala, but elsewhere in this book Bassam and Rami have allowed me to shape and reshape their words and their words.") 

This is not a point A to point B book.  It wanders and winds and fills in details, not just of the stories of these two men, but the historical and biological context inform their stories. 

At times, too many times, in the history of human beings, things looked hopeless.  And for hundreds of millions of individuals they were. Yet those who survived eventually picked up the pieces and went on.  Hitler's thousand year Reich didn't last two decades.  The Soviet Union crumbled.  Slavery ended.  Jim Crow ended.  Women got the right to vote.  Russia's three day war in Ukraine is going on four months now.  

Our choice is to distract ourselves until we eventually get ground up (or somehow survive) or we can do as Rami has committed himself to do:  we have to try to smash the forces that have an interest in keeping us silent.

 

 

Everyone Needs A Break - Peonies Are Starting To Bloom At The Alaska Botanical Garden

The early peonies are blooming - some finishing.  Others are still at the bud stage.  And there are two other flowers included in the mix.   

That's all.  

Choking The Secret Service, Smashing China, Taking Down Security Magnetometer - Thoughts From Today's Jan6 Committee Hearing

The headlines are expressing surprise at how much the the January 6 Hearings are revealing and Republicans are claiming not to have understood how serious things were.  

From @PalmerReport:

CNN says many Republican officials are “stunned” by today’s bombshells about Trump. No. They knew he was every bit this evil. They’re only stunned that the January 6th Committee was this successful at digging it all up.

No one who has paid any attention whatsoever, didn't know how bad it was.  Only those who had a  vested interest in believing Trump should have known.  

Here are some thoughts which I started jotting down after the first break today:

1.  Most pressing question for me was: what motivates a person like Cassidy Hutchinson, who has served a number of far right politicians before moving to the White House, to now testify about what she saw?  How did she make the decision?  I understand that we tolerate flaws in people we love or people we hope will achieve important outcomes.  Democrats defended Clinton during his impeachment trial because they thought his presidency was more important.  I'm just curious how people decide their hero has cross one line too many?  

Later, Hutchinson actually told us it was watching the her big boss actually encouraging the insurrection.  

 "As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic, it was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie,".  

2.  Dripping Ketchup, Smashing China:  In regards to that first question,  I'm sure there are some very proper GOP women who will finally be convinced after hearing that he smashed the china against the wall.  

Hutchinson testified that T was so mad at Barr for an interview with the media (AP I think) that he threw his lunch against the wall, getting it full of ketchup, and breaking the (White House presumably) china.  

They might think that groping 'those kind of women' was just boys being boys.  But visualizing the ketchup dripping down the wall and seeing the broken china pieces on the floor will be enough for some to draw the line.  

3.  The Magnetometer,  steering wheel, and the neck.  Hutchinson testified that Trump learned the audience for his speech wasn't as big as he wanted because his supporters didn't want to go through the Magnetometer machines and have their weapons confiscated.  He said they weren't going to hurt him and should keep their weapons and take them to the Capitol

“I don’t fucking care they have weapons,” he allegedly said. “Take the fucking mags away.” Then in his speech, he urged those same supporters to march down to the Capitol. 

And then when the secret service refused his order to drive to the Capitol, Hutchinson testified that he grabbed the steering wheel and the neck of the secret service guarding him trying to get them to turn around and drive to the Capitol with the mob.  

"“I’m the f—-ing president, take me to the Capitol now,” he told his staff, according to Hutchinson. The president lunged for the steering wheel, Ornato told Hutchinson, and when Engel tried to restrain him, Trump lunged for Engel and tried to grab him around his throat area."  (MSNBC)

I'd note T has denied these events ever happened.  Of course.  Maybe he should call up Rep. Thompson and volunteer to testify under oath.  

4.  Hanged versus Hung.  She talked about T encouraging the people who wanted Pence 'hung.'  Just for the record, pictures and clothes and even juries can be hung.  But when talking about people executed with ropes around their necks, the right word is 'hanged'.  I don't think it matters too much, but it is a curiosity of the English language.  

5.  Cassidy Hutchinson is merely 25 years old and has had positions working for various powerful Republican politicians since graduating from college.  She was remarkably composed at the hearing today.  

People might tell you we need to get past this and just move on. We don't do that for most crimes where there's an accused unless the prosecution doesn't think there is enough evidence, or the accused is a white police officer or very wealthy and/or well connected.  

Not enforcing the law vigorously against those who tried to overthrow the election and end American democracy as we know it, by people who continue to call the visible leader of that movement their hero and want him to run again in 2024, only encourages such behavior to continue. Putting every insurrectionist  in  prison isn't going to change their minds, just as imprisoning a murderer isn't going to change his mind.  We put them away to stop them from committing more crimes. Though a civilized country would find far more humane and effective ways to deter and rehabilitate then the US prison system. 

And for those Republicans, particularly in Congress, who want to just let it go, I'd remind them that there were ten Congressional Benghazi investigations from April 2013 to December 2016.

"Despite numerous allegations against Obama administration officials of scandal, cover-up and lying regarding the Benghazi attack and its aftermath, none of the ten investigations found any evidence to support those allegations."

And then there was the Clinton email investigations.  The Republicans are less effective in investigations that end up in prosecutions.  They're more effective in creating 'scandals' to hurt their opponents' election chances.   

Finally,  John Durham is still investigating the FBI investigation of the Russian connections to Trump.  He was appointed in May 2019.  The recent trial jury in that investigation found attorney John Sussman not guilty.  That's over three years for people whose math is rusty.  At about $1 million per year.  

Anchorage Rallies In Protest of Supreme Court Election Decision

This afternoon, people gathered at the Parkstrip and marched to the Anchorage Town Square to protest Friday's Supreme Court decision on abortion.  My rough estimate of the crowd is 400-600.  

Observations:  The crowd was younger than the demonstration on May 8, 2022 when the decision was leaked.  The organizers also talked a lot about voting this time, which was missing at the previous demonstration.  Including voting no on whether Alaska should have a constitutional convention.  (The constitution requires such a vote every ten years.)  Conservatives want such a convention to do (at least) two things:

1. Remove the right to privacy in the constitution 
2. Change how judges are selected in Alaska (by a non-partisan commission which evaluates people applying for judgeships by reviewing surveys of judges, attorneys, juries, court employees, and court watchers.  Top candidates are passed on to the Governor to choose from.

During the 1960's the protesting against the Vietnam war was invigorated by the fact that all 18 year old men had to register for the draft and stood a decent chance of being sent to Vietnam to fight.  All their friends and family had a very personal interest in the war ending.  

Today's young folks have been give an equally important stake in fighting Dobbs v. Jackson's Women's Health Organization.  This time it's all women of child bearing age who are on the line, but since women don't need an abortion unless a man has been involved, men too have a vital stake.  And if the Vietnam War protests are any predictor, the people fighting to make abortions legal again aren't going away. 

Here are some photos from today's protest.

1927 Buck v. Bell

Facts of the case

Carrie Buck was a "feeble minded woman" who was committed to a state mental institution. Her condition had been present in her family for the last three generations. A Virginia law allowed for the sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions to promote the "health of the patient and the welfare of society." Before the procedure could be performed, however, a hearing was required to determine whether or not the operation was a wise thing to do.

Question

Did the Virginia statute which authorized sterilization deny Buck the right to due process of the law and the equal protection of the laws as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment?

Conclusion

The Court found that the statute did not violate the Constitution. Justice Holmes made clear that Buck's challenge was not upon the medical procedure involved but on the process of the substantive law. Since sterilization could not occur until a proper hearing had occurred (at which the patient and a guardian could be present) and after the Circuit Court of the County and the Supreme Court of Appeals had reviewed the case, if so requested by the patient. Only after "months of observation" could the operation take place. That was enough to satisfy the Court that there was no Constitutional violation. Citing the best interests of the state, Justice Holmes affirmed the value of a law like Virginia's in order to prevent the nation from "being swamped with incompetence . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)

Argued March 29-30, 1965

Decided June 7, 1965

Syllabus

Appellants, the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and its medical director, a licensed physician, were convicted as accessories for giving married persons information and medical advice on how to prevent conception and, following examination, prescribing a contraceptive device or material for the wife's use. A Connecticut statute makes it a crime for any person to use any drug or article to prevent conception. Appellants claimed that the accessory statute, as applied, violated the Fourteenth Amendment. An intermediate appellate court and the State's highest court affirmed the judgment.

Held:

1. Appellants have standing to assert the constitutional rights of the married people. Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U. S. 44, distinguished. P. 381 U. S. 481.

2. The Connecticut statute forbidding use of contraceptives violates the right of marital privacy which is within the penumbra of specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights. Pp. 381 U. S. 481-486.

Eisenstadt v. Baird

DECIDED  Mar 22, 1972

Facts of the case

William Baird gave away Emko Vaginal Foam to a woman following his Boston University lecture on birth control and over-population. Massachusetts charged Baird with a felony, to distribute contraceptives to unmarried men or women. Under the law, only married couples could obtain contraceptives; only registered doctors or pharmacists could provide them. Baird was not an authorized distributor of contraceptives.

Question

Did the Massachusetts law violate the right to privacy acknowledged in Griswold v. Connecticut and protected from state intrusion by the Fourteenth Amendment?

Conclusion

6–1 DECISION 

MAJORITY OPINION BY WILLIAM J. BRENNAN, JR.

In a 6-to-1 decision, the Court struck down the Massachusetts law but not on privacy grounds. The Court held that the law's distinction between single and married individuals failed to satisfy the "rational basis test" of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Married couples were entitled to contraception under the Court's Griswold decision. Withholding that right to single persons without a rational basis proved the fatal flaw. Thus, the Court did not have to rely on Griswold to invalidate the Massachusetts statute. "If the right of privacy means anything, wrote Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. for the majority, "it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."

New Season Of Sopranos Debuts At House Jan 6 Insurrection Hearings

 The new season stars DJT as Tony Soprano and his head honchos trying to persuade elections officials to change elections results.  With visits to Arizona and Georgia, threatening phone calls.  It's all there including thugs sent out to intimidate election officials and their grandmothers.  

Here's the full hour long audio recording of the then president's phone call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State pressuring him to find enough votes to swing Georgia over to Trump.  (They only played a snippet at the hearing.)

Later in the episode we heard from two election workers - mother and daughter - who had been named by Trump and accused of counting fraudulent Biden votes.  These women had T thugs at their homes harassing them.  Even going into the grandmother's house looking to make a citizens arrest of the two women Trump had accused.  Imagine how an older black woman in Georgia might react to a crowd of angry white men breaking into her house.  She lived when lynchings were still happening on a regular basis.  

Here's Faye Moss' testimony:

What the hearing left out - or I just missed - was that these two women have filed two lawsuits over this.

"Protect Democracy, through its Law for Truth project, represents Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss in two landmark defamation lawsuits. Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss served as election workers in Fulton County, Georgia during the 2020 election. False claims that they engaged in ballot fraud in that capacity have caused them to suffer extensive harassment and threats of physical violence.

The first suit names The Gateway Pundit, a website which the complaint calls “among the leading purveyors of false information in the United States.” Law for Truth has undertaken this representation in partnership with the law firms DuBose Miller LLC, Dowd Bennett LLP, and Kastorf Law, LLC and the Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. The Gateway Pundit, along with its founding editor Jim Hoft, and contributor Joe Hoft, knowingly disseminated blatantly false stories claiming that Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss were involved in a conspiracy to commit election fraud, and continued to publish these untruths long after they were proven to be false. 

The second suit names Herring Networks, Inc., which owns and operates One America News Network (OAN), OAN CEO Robert Herring, OAN President Charles Herring, OAN staffer Chanel Rion, and frequent OAN guest Rudolph Giuliani. The suit alleges that the defendants have knowingly and repeatedly disseminated false information about Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss and their work for the County on election night. In this suit, Law for Truth represents Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, in partnership with the law firms Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, DuBose Miller LLC, and Kastorf Law, LLC."

Sitting behind Ms Moss in the opening of the video is Mike Gottlieb, Ms. Moss and her mom's attorney. who has been filing suits for other election workers defamed and attacked.  

Here's a link to the actual suit against OAN.  It was filed Dec. 21, 2021.  

Did the committee not mention these lawsuits to gain greater pity for Ms. Moss?  I don't know.  But I personally feel much better knowing that steps are being taken to punish those who knowingly spread lies like this that cause great harm to people doing their jobs.  Jobs that are fundamental to democracy.  (It was amended in May when OAN OAN retracted its claims about Georgia, Moss, and Freeman.  That's good, but were there no consequences other than the expenses of hiring a lawyer for the harm they've done these women?  And what about the people who harassed them and entered the grandmother's home?  If there are no consequences they become emboldened to do it again.  Our system is failing.)

We need as many strong, upstanding citizens as possible to work and volunteer at voting places in every election to make sure elections are not stolen by the likes of Don Soprano.  

Best Book In Many Years: Apeirogon Part 1 - Hoopoe

 

Been reading marathon like to finish this by book club Monday night.  

It's fantastic!!  Yesterday I'd read the 500th section and at the Juneteenth Festival I was telling everyone I met about the book.  

You're going to hear more about this book in coming days here.  But for now, this its sort of a diversion.  

The cover is full of birds. And birds fly in and out  throughout.  This is not a book about birds, it's just that the author brings in all sorts of topics that are relevant to the key tale, which is about an Israeli Jew whose daughter was blown up in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem and a Palestinian Muslim whose daughter was shot in the head by Israeli police.  Both meet at a group called the Parents Circle - an organization that gets parents who have lost children in the battles between Israelis and Palestinians.  They connect and then start making presentations to groups all over the the world, But mostly in Israel and Occupied Palestine.  

It's a fictionalized account of real events.  Perhaps telling us more truths than a non-fiction account could.  It's divided into 1001 sections. Each of different lengths.  Some span half a dozen pages or more.  Others are just one line.  They number 1 -500. The next one is 1000,  The next one is 500 again and the rest go back to 1.  It's almost like a book of many, many short stories.  Sections 500 are perhaps the crux of the book,  all the bits and pieces we've already heard about in previous sections, but knitted together.  The first section 500 is the talk given by Rami, the Israeli, at the Cremisan Monastery at Beit Jala in the Occupied Territories.  The second section 500 is the talk given by Bassam, the Palestinian, the same night and in the same place.  

But I want to save 500 for later.  In this post I want to mention birds.  Particularly hoopoes.  

Section 3, on page 4 (Section 1 starts on page 3) begins 

"Five hundred million birds arc the sky over the hills of Beit Jala every year.  They move by ancient ancestry:  hoopoes, thrushes, flycatchers, warblers, cuckoos, starlings, shrikes, ruffs, northern wheatears, plovers, sunbirds, swift's, sparrows, nightjars, owls, gulls, hawks, eagles, kites, cranes, buzzards, sandpipers, pelicans, flamingos, storks, pied bush chats, griffon vultures, European rollers, Arabian babblers, bee-eaters, turtledoves, whitethroats, yellow wagtails, blackcaps, red-throated pipits, little bitterns.  

It is the world's second busiest migratory superhighway:  at least four hundred different species of birds torrent through, riding different levels in the sky.  Long fees of honking intent.  Sole travelers skimming low over the grass."

Already in this section, though I didn't realize it at the time, it prepares us for that talk at the Cremisan Monastery in Beit Jala.  And sections like this put the present day events into perspective. The birds have been flying by here for thousands of years.  Many, many young girls have died during that time span in this place.  While the book focuses on two particular girls, Smadar and Abir, all the other girls' lives were important too and at the same time all those birds flew by totally unaware.  

And the book is like that.   Fragments of life spiral in and out of center stage, all adding rich links, illustrating the interconnection of everything.  

But this post is about hoopoes.  (Did you catch that hoopoes are the first bird mentioned in Section 3?)

We hear about them again in Sections 469 - 471.  469 is about a group of actors (including Helen Mirren) who travel through rural Algeria.

"The troupe journeyed through the desert, stopping in the evenings in the smallest and most isolated villages they could find.  They unfurled a large carpet and set up a series of corrugated boxes while one of the actors sounded out a drum call.  An audience formed, and the troupe began their performance of an adaption of The Conference of the Birds, based on an allegorical poem by Farid ud-Din Attar, using hand puppets to illustrate the story of a gathering of the world's birds trying to decide who should be their king.

In the play, each bird represents a human fault which prevents man from attaining enlightenment.  The wisest bird among the, the hoopoe, suggest that together they try to find the legendary Persian Simorgh to gain enlightenment for themselves. . . 

The village crowds reacted variously - some cheered, others laughed, while a few stayed silent . . "

[As I think of my two years in a rural Thai town, itinerant troops of actors would come through, set up their stage, and perform for folks in the evening - Thai dramas and Chinese opera perhaps the most popular.] 

470

"The Conference of the Birds was written in Persia, at the end of the twelfth century.

When the last birds - thirty of them - finally get to the home of the Simorgh, exhausted, they gaze into a lake and instead of meeting the mythical creature they've been searching for, they find only their own reflections."

471

"On the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of Israel, the hoopoe -the loquacious, dappled, with a long beak and slicked-back tuft of hair - was chosen as the national bird.

During the vote, Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, said he was only sorry that the most Zionist of birds, the dove, had not made the final cut.  

It was, said Nurit [wife of Rami, the Israeli father] one of the most perverse lines she had heard in her life, although it was, she added, apt that the name Peres in Hebrew meant bearded vulture."

In a sense, this is a book of 1001 short stories that all intertwine.  

The hoopoe references are among the least intertwined into the story itself.  

But the hoopoe is a bird that has fascinated me since I first saw it in the Hong Kong Bird Guide I bought in 1989 when I was teaching there.  The picture from that book should help you see why I was so taken.

Those are all cool looking birds, but the hoopoe is in a class all by itself.  I never saw a hoopoe in Hong Kong.  But in 2006, after giving a paper at a conference in New Delhi, we went to see the Taj Mahal.  I couldn't imagine that after seeing pictures of the Taj all my life, that the real thing would live up to my expectations.  I was wrong.  It was amazing.  

We were sitting on a bench in front of this exquisite love letter in the form of enchanting white curves, when a strange bird caught my attention.  As I looked closer, I suddenly realized, whoa, that's a real live hoopoe.  

There were a bunch of them on the lawn.  The history of the Taj would have to wait a bit. 

So, there you have an appetizer for Apeirogon.  There will be at least one more post on this book.  But I still have about 40 pages to go.  I'll let you know if the hoopoe makes another surprise appearance at the end.  

 NOTE July 5, 2022:  I've put up a second, meatier post about Apeirogon here.

History's Verdict, SCOTUS & Presidential Elections, Right Has Good Reason To Hate Pelosi, Judging Others

There's guns, abortion, Ginni Thomas, Jan 6, COVID, Louis DeJoy still running the post office, the high rejection rates in Alaska's recent all mail in election, climate change related fires and storms yet no serious action to curb carbon emissions, Ukraine, attacks on LGBTQ,  . . . 

There are just too many fronts for anyone to meaningfully comment about much.  

So I'm limiting this to a couple of very narrowly focused thoughts.  

1.  How Will History Report All This?  People have been talking about how history will judge things that are coming to light at the Jan 6 hearings.  But I've been concerned that if gerrymandering and misinformation and voter suppression work, those in control will be the people who will write history in T's favor.

But then I realized that historians around the world will also be writing this history and if we're lucky, they'll preserve the real story.  And if we're even luckier, the hearings - like the Watergate hearings did eventually - will shock enough people into realizing how close we were to a coup.  And we'll have a repeat of the post-Watergate cleaning up.  

2.  The Supreme Court And Presidential Elections.  As I watched Twitter today there was a lot of attention on Ginni Thomas, Tom Eastman, Clarence Thomas, and Alito.  Now people may think this is all just wild speculation, but I've been fairly careful with who I follow on Twitter, and I've found Twitter gives me a one to three day heads up on what gets covered in the mainstream media.  But as I was listening to the chatter that suggests Eastman thought that if the ratification of the election got delayed a week or so, then Thomas and Alito would support the T position.  Far fetched?  

Then I thought about how the Court intervened to interrupt the Florida recounts to declare Bush president.  They've done this before.  John Roberts was on the Bush side of that verdict. And I began to think about how that too was probably planned out in advance.  Scary stuff.  Maybe some researchers will get some of those involved to offer more on how that was pulled off.  

3.  Nancy Pelosi, an American Hero.  Several people gave Pelosi a lot of credit today.  First, for calling Congress back after the insurrection so they could finish ratifying the election.  Not giving the Court any time to intervene.  Second for going ahead with the Jan 6 hearings.  That she'd even pulled a fast one of McConnell who refused to participate in a joint Senate and House hearing that would have give T Republicans much more power. (As someone said, they would have subpoenaed Hunter Biden and interrogated him for three months to block everything else.)  But McConnell said no, and now the Democrats can do what they want and they're doing it well.  With the considerable assistance of Liz Cheney.  

4.  Lessons in Making Judgments About People - Exhibit 1:  Liz Cheney.  I totally disagree with most of her policy beliefs.  Never expected to be saying positive things about her. But I do share her belief in the rule of law.  And the various T insiders who have been testifying remind us that despite the many morally questionable decisions they had to make to serve Trump, they did have some red lines they wouldn't cross.

Labor Shortage, Law Enforcement And Teaching In Alaska

 This has been flashing at the State Troopers Headquarters at Tudor and MLK

Now Hiring State Troopers

$20,000 Hiring Bonus

Starting Salary $74,693-100,630

Apply Online Today

Here are the qualifications listed online:

The minimum qualifications for the position of State Trooper Recruit/Lateral are outlined below.

General Qualifications

• Must be a citizen (including US Nationals) of the United States of America.
• Must be 21 years of age or older* at the start of the academy .
• Must be conversant in both spoken and written English.
• Most possess a high school diploma or have passed a General Education Development (GED) test.

* There is no upper age limit; if you can pass the physical fitness test and medical screening,  you could be hired.

Driving

• Must possess a valid driver’s license issued within the United States or its Territories.
• Must be free of excessive moving violations and recent license actions (canceled, revoked, suspended, limited, or SR-22 requirement).

Drugs

Drug use/abuse is closely scrutinized and recent drug use may be cause for elimination from the hiring process, including:

• Marijuana use within the last year
• Use of illegal narcotics within the last ten years
• Manufacture/sale of illegal narcotics as an adult
• Illegal drug use while employed in a law enforcement position
• Prescription drug use without a prescription unless there was an immediate, pressing, or emergency medical circumstance to justify the use

Criminal History

• Adult criminal history is closely scrutinized and the following may be cause for elimination from the hiring process:
• Felony conduct as an adult
• Misdemeanor convictions within the last ten years
• Any conviction related to domestic violence

So a high school diploma or GED is all you need to get a starting salary of

In comparison, here's the salary schedule from the Anchorage Education Association  Contract - teachers.  This is for the 202-1022 school year.  There is a bump up each year, but the highest starting salary is $55,158 and the highest top salary is $97,238.  

100 SERIES – SALARIES AND BENEFITS 105 SALARY SCHEDULE

2021-2022 Salary Schedule

Step	B00	B18	B36	B54	B72
0	53,287	55,872	58,455	61,039	65,882
1	54,698	57,282	59,865	62,448	67,283
2	56,106	58,690	61,273	63,857	68,685
3	57,516	60,099	62,682	65,266	70,087
4	58,925	61,508	64,091	66,674	71,488
5	60,333	62,917	65,501	68,085	72,892
6	61,745	64,326	66,910	69,494	74,294
7	63,153	65,737	68,320	70,901	75,697
8	64,562	67,145	69,729	72,311	77,101
9	65,970	68,554	71,137	73,722	78,501
10	67,378	69,963	72,548	75,129	79,904
11	-	71,371	73,955	76,540	81,306
12	-	72,780	75,364	77,947	82,708
13	-	-	76,773	79,357	84,109
14	-	-	78,182	80,768	85,514
15	-	-	79,591	82,175	86,915
16	-	-	-	83,584	88,318
17	-	-	-	84,993	89,718
18	-	-	-	-	91,119
19	-	-	-	-	92,520
20	-	-	-	-	93,922

 

Here are the qualification requirements for an elementary school teacher:

Job Requirements
The following are required:

1. A valid Alaska initial, professional, or master teaching certificate.
2. Evidence of content knowledge shown by:
1. a posted degree in the content area of this position; or
2. a posted minor in the content area of this position; or
3. passing Praxis Subject Assessments scores (formerly Praxis II) in the content area of this position; or
4. a certificate endorsement in the content area of this position

What's required for a teaching certificate?  There's a lot of different ones listed, but here's for someone who has never taught in Alaska:

INITIAL/PROGRAM ENROLLMENT TEACHER CERTIFICATE

To qualify for an Initial/Program Enrollment teacher certificate, an applicant must meet the following requirements:

• Has never held an Alaska teacher certificate

• Completion of a bachelor’s degree from a regionally or nationally accredited university;

• Current enrollment in an approved teacher preparation program as verified by a Program Enrollment form (docx) and official transcripts (Program must be completed within two (2) years of the issuance of the Initial certificate).
• Passing scores on an approved basic competency exam 
• Has passing scores on an approved content area exam
• Five years of experience in the subject matter that you will be teaching;

• Offered a certified teaching position by an Alaska public school district.

I've had comments in the past that argued that having a Bachelor's degree is no guarantee that someone can do the job better than someone without one.  That requiring such a degree is elitist.   I would say that depends on the kind of job you're hiring for.  And the quality of the degree one has.  

But I would argue that a good Bachelor's degree forces one to challenge one's world view, to be exposed to alternative ways of thinking about things, to develop thinking and logic skills, and to spend time working through ethical problems.

I suspect that if qualified teachers applied for and got State Trooper positions, the quality of our state law enforcement would improve greatly.  I also think that if our teacher pay scale were to be more like the trooper pay scale, we'd have better teacher applicants.  But I would also acknowledge that there are both troopers and teachers who would apply for those positions regardless of the pay, because that's what they really want to do.  In both cases, I would hope the hiring authorities make sure that the want to pursue those careers for the right reasons.